Making sense of VeganMoFo 2014

Rants, realizations & VeganMoFo 2014 aka Curry, Tales & Travel-logs?

Portland life returns:

Hold up, it’s September 1?! My late July, two-week trip to NYC quickly spun to three, which I then extended to an entire month’s worth of slothing J. Legume, splitting our time (and commuting) between Bushwick and the curious world of Staten Island, catching up with family & friends, chopping my hair off, and checking off a list of new-to-me and damn nostalgic cheap eats in the big apple. As usual, I took a ton of photos. shared a select bunch of Instagrams (where you can find me primarily as my PPK namesake, @jdfunks), and created a ton of ongoing docs housing my thoughts on this and that, which adds to my growing collection of stuff residing behind-the-scenes that I intend to share and don’t get to as much as I like, which brings me here for the big & shiny Day 1 of VeganMoFo.

Yeah, this remains one of my favorite dishes in the Pacific Northwest.

The point is, I want to share these experiences. I spent years travel writing and I suppose it’s a reflection of me not wanting to live-blog, to contemplate and reflect, but I’ve fallen into the pattern of spending so long holding onto these experiences (which is good!), because you know, they happened to me, and putting them away in some internet drawer, or should I say, memory card, and then writing a part of a draft, getting lost in those digital photo archives, resenting the fact that I’m not still wandering somewhere, drinking coconuts or eating pizza, and there I go, back to my projects and soon enough, off visiting somewhere else, and one more adventure added to the pile. End rant, cue teaser, because let me fast forward for once: I want to share these experiences and eats from the places I’ve traveled this past year, which means Thailand, Cambodia, Las Vegas, Austin, Seattle, and NYC. Therefore, I’ve gotten most of my ranting done, and I’m dusting off my Google Docs and thinking curry, doughnuts, tacos and travel for the next month. I have to admit, my workload is intense these days, but I’m aiming for 3 posts a week, along the lines of:

That, and seasonal eats, late summer farmers market and CSA shares, plus consequent recipes (including the few I jotted down before my NYC getaway) because that’s such a big part of my life. Contrary to what I’ve dabbled in these past years, my future intentions in this here b-l-o-g involve a lot less structure, and more everyday whimsy, cooking and storytelling. Stay tuned, if you like.

I so dig Bouldin Creek which actually came as a surprise, because I was forewarned by folks not to put it on my must-visit list. The reasoning seemed to be that we have way more vegan brunch food in Portland, which is true, but I suppose it’s my sense of contrary and ongoing appreciation for breakfast tacos talking here, because I already regret not visiting more.

It’s almost shocking that I was able to enjoy the amount of vegan ice cream I did while in NYC, because treenut love is EVERYWHERE. And that’s okay, really, I can handle it. I came to accept missing out on the cashew creme revolution of 2012, and I’ve taken a seat, cozying up to my buddy coconut.

Amazing pictures! I feel exactly the same way about past travel that I keep hidden in the back of my mind, and then it gets buried by other travels before I can address it.
I can’t wait for your NYC ice cream features! So you aren’t still there right?

It’s so much fun reading your posts. I’m delighted to hear we’ll be able to do that more this month. And I’m looking forward to hear about that New York ice cream. Last time, I just had Lula’s and Dun-well. I loved Dun-well’s.